


Welcome Home

by aslightstep



Series: Drabblethon: Winteriron edition [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bucky Barnes Feels, Hydra, M/M, PTSD, Ten Rings, Therapy, healing together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslightstep/pseuds/aslightstep
Summary: All my nightmares escaped my head/Bar the door, please don't let them inWhen Tony finds out why Pietro and Wanda Maximoff want to kill him, for one long moment he thinks about letting them.“This was never my life.” But he just let it happen.It’d be nothing more than what he deserves.OR“Do you even remember them?” Stark’s robotic voice snarls in his ear, and for a second, even longer, Bucky thinks about not fighting, sagging into that grip, letting Tony Stark strangle him.“I remember all of them.”He could be put in that chair a million times. He’d still deserve it.ORBucky and Tony’s lives have paralleled many times over the years. Perhaps that’s why they fit so well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my Drabblethon series. Song is Welcome Home by Radical Face.

**2015/ _1949_  
  (** Sleep don’t visit/ _So I choke on sun)_

He hasn’t slept in days. 

He can’t. Not when - not when that dream is waiting for him. All his friends, his team, the people he was supposed to protect, dying.

“You could have saved us.”

 _Fuck. No._ He has to keep working. He has to keep-

He is under a desk and doesn’t know how he got there. He doesn’t know why he’s like this. Tony has been on the edge for awhile now, even he is self-aware to realize that, but he was keeping it under control. Ever since the HYDRA base - ever since he had that vision.

He can’t think. Or eat. Or sleep. He hasn’t seen the sun in days but he’s afraid to go outside, afraid to look at the sun and see the sky swarming with aliens.

His mind feels like it’s not his anymore. It belongs solely to the future. Protection. _Ultron_.

_They’ve done something to him. Or…they’ve been doing it for awhile? He isn’t sure, not of anything anymore, not for some time._

_He thinks he might have been a person once, and he thinks that person might have been called Bucky. But Bucky goes away whenever they put him in the chair, and less and less of him comes back every time._

_There’s a void left in its place. A void they call_ Asset _. He doesn’t want to be Asset, but he’s not sure there’s anything to go back to. There might have been a time and a place, a building made of stone that felt warm all the time and a man, a boy, a friend with hair bright like the sun-_

_There might have been-_

_There might have been-_

_The man blinks his eyes open to gray walls and cold air that makes his breath mist when he breathes “готовы соблюдать.”_

* * *

**February 2017  
** _(And the days blur into one)  
_

Bucky doesn’t know how long they’ve been at this. 

Stark has not left his side once as Bucky works through the BARF program to deprogram himself, even through those endless first weeks where Bucky could not hold on to any single memory and flipped through them all, including the Starks deaths, at rapid speed.

Stark had promised the United Nations that he would get James Barnes better. That he would no longer be a threat. The UN agreed, as long as Stark oversaw the operation personally. 

Now they are stuck here together, countless days trapped in the basement of a secret Wakandan science facility because Tony, Steve, and T’Challa didn’t trust the American government to not be idle about this. He doesn’t know how many times Stark has watched his parents die, now, but he’s stopped flinching, and somehow that’s worse than the time he tried to kill Bucky over it.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, panting, sliding down against the wall as the faces of one of his many handlers fades away. Stark brings him a water bottle and sits beside him, looking at Bucky with a surprising amount of compassion.

_I killed your parents. I did it. I did it. I don’t deserve this._

“Well,” Stark says, a smirk creeping across his face that Bucky suspects is not directed anywhere but inwards. “In my ceaseless quest of do-gooding, helping an innocent man I almost killed seemed like a logical step, right?”

Ah. So. Redemption. _That_  Bucky can understand.

* * *

**2012/ _1945  
_** (And the backs of my eyes hum/ _With things I’ve never done)_

The portal, space, is _so beautiful_.

If he didn’t this giant nuke on his back, if he wasn’t going to die up out here, _alone_ , Tony might have been able to appreciate it.

He chokes on nothing as he watches the missile sail forward towards the Chitauri ship. The suit wasn’t built for a vacuum. There is no air here. He is choking on nothing, he can hear it in the suit, he is dying-

“Call failed,” JARVIS tries to tell him before the HUD goes dark and the missile hits. The ship explodes, the light filling up his vision.

At least they’re safe. At least he saved them. The Avengers can handle the rest. Tony’s done his job. Tony can-

Tony cannot. Tony closes his eyes.

_There is a jolt and Bucky loses his grip. He falls._

_Steve screams out his name but its lost in the wind, lost to Bucky’s own screaming. God, what if he doesn’t die on impact? What if he survives the fall, lingers on? His body can handle a lot these days, it could keep him alive for days while he suffered._

_Please let me die, he prays. He should be angry, his life should be flashing before his eyes, all the things he’s never going to get to see or do. He was almost there, almost to his happy ending, his picket fence and kids._

_But Stevie’s safe. ‘Cause Bucky saved him. He did his job. Hopefully Carter can pick up the slack when he’s gone. If he goes._

_Please let me die, he prays, just before he hits the ground._

* * *

**May 2017  
** (Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline)

Tony watches Barnes out of the corner of his eye, watching, waiting for any sign of discomfort. He’s gotten pretty good at spotting them in the past few months and he’ll have Happy turn this car around the minute he sees that particular muscle in Bucky’s jaw clench.

“This is Brooklyn?” the soldier asks, hoarse and disbelieving.

“You wanted to see,” Tony replies, knowing his sullen tone is irrational but he hates this, hates being any part of Barnes’ continued pain after seeing the man suffer through so much under the BARF program - and before. Before. _Jesus._

Barnes had set him straight about making it up to him just hours ago when they touched down on American soil, made it quite clear that they were _square, Tony, you hearing me? Have been for about three decades now_ but Tony is self-aware enough to know it took a lot more than words to assuage his guilt complex.

Bucky’d wanted to see Brooklyn first, without Steve trying to stay positive the whole time, before they went to the compound. Now, looking at his face, Tony is kind of regretting agreeing to that.

“It’s gone,” he says. “I mean, I knew, I remember watching the world change, but it’s all-”

“It’s not,” Tony replies.

“All the people. The - that used to be a ice cream parlor. And that building used to be apartments, the Roths lived there. There was a-” Bucky breaks off, looking determinedly away from the window and down to his hands.

Tony gazes at him for a long second, that terribly familiar feeling of needing to do more and not knowing how rising up in him, before he unbuckles his seatbelt and slides a little bit closer. “Do you want to know a secret from an expert in empty places?”

“Why not.”

“It’s all still there. There are ghosts in the wall.” Tony smiles, self-deprecating, knowing he sounds insane.  Thinks of the mansion, the parlor where the piano still plays, his father’s office that still smells of smoke, the billiards room where Obie still laughs, the kitchen where Ana’s heels still click on the tile as she and Jarvis dance. 

Maybe Bucky can see that in his eyes because there is understanding in his own. “Sounds kinda creepy, Stark.”

Tony shrugs. “Depends on who you listen to.” 

* * *

**2015/ _2016_  
** (Like a row of captured ghosts/ _Over old dead grass)_

When Tony finds out why Pietro and Wanda Maximoff want to kill him, for one long moment he thinks about letting them.

“This was never my life.” He just let it happen.

It’d be nothing more than what he deserves.

_“Do you even remember them?” Stark’s robotic voice snarls in his ear, and for a second, even longer, Bucky thinks about not fighting, sagging into that grip, letting Tony Stark strangle him.  
_

_“I remember all of them.”  
_

_He could be put in that chair a million times. He’d still deserve it._

* * *

**December 16, 2017  
** _(Was never much but we made the most)_

He avoids Tony for most of the month, and it gnaws at him like an ache.

He’s been forgiven and he’s given forgiveness but this day is greater than Tony Stark’s endless if secretive benevolence. No matter how much Bucky wants to see him - and he always wants to see Tony, every second, every breath, wants to crawl inside Tony and live there - it’s not up to him.

And Tony hasn’t sought him out.

So Bucky waits. It’s what he’s good at. And truth be told, a small part of him is glad for the absence, glad at the unknown, if the hate has temporarily returned to Tony’s brilliant, bright eyes.

Midnight comes and goes and he stays awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering how Tony’s doing, how he coped with today, when the lights of his room slowly begin to grow brighter, a system Tony and he developed together after one too many sudden awakenings triggered a panic attack.

A moment later there is a knock on the door.

Tony is standing in the hall. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I - yeah,” Bucky says on a sigh. “Could say the same to you.” Tony just nods, hunching in on himself. “I didn’t want to - hurt you.”

“You never do. You _never_ have,” Tony whispers fiercely. “Look, I don’t want to see you. But I don’t wanna be with anyone else. Not - now. They don’t get it.”

“I do,” Bucky says quietly, and Tony nods again. They look at each other, miserable and hopeful and regretful, all together, both of them.

Tony breaks first. He always does, because he is the bravest man Bucky knows. “It’s over now. It’s the seventeenth. And I miss you. Can I come in?”

Bucky steps aside, clearing the way.

* * *

**2008/ _1975_  
** (Ships are launching from my chest/ _Some have names but most do not)_

Tony wakes up swallowing a scream.

He doesn’t know where he is for a moment and then he remembers the ambush, the missile, pain and darkness and blood and the rattle of saw in his bones as it cut into him-

He claws at his chest, pulling back the bandages. There is something hard underneath, something cold and not fucking human. Underneath the dingy white his fingers brush against metal and he tries not to scream, _don’t scream, Tony, don’t scream_ -

The arc reactor is better than its car-battery prototype but better is so wildly subjective now. It is not lightweight. It has taken up 40% of his main chest cavity. His sternum is held together by steel and wishful thinking. Fifteen percent of his lungs is gone. 

It’s killing him. It saves his life, and for five years it kills him.

_Sometimes the Asset wakes up and cannot remember the arm, where it came from, or how he got it. Usually when this happens he can be calmed in a timely fashion, settled into a chair and wiped into complacency._

_This is not one of those times._

_The arm does not belong to him. The arm is not right. When he moves he can feel bolts creak in his shoulders. He can feel the wires extending into his brain stem. It is too heavy, making him sag. Why was this done? He would never have chosen this, never chosen to be attached to a nightmare._ This - this is not right _-_

 _“Who am I?” he snarls._ This is not right _. “What did you do to me?” It’s coming out of his mouth in a strange language, one he can’t remember knowing.  
_

_He tears the arm off, even as the odd pressure begins to overload his nerves, transforming into pain. He tears and tears even as they get him into a chair. The arm is murder, he knows. It must go._

* * *

**March 2018  
** (If you find one please let me know what piece I’ve lost)

Tony takes him to the graves at his request. Steve accompanies them some times, Natasha others, but mostly it’s just the two of them.

They visit his sisters, his parents, his old friends. They visit Morita, and Carter, and Dugan.

They visit the Starks, and Russian scientists, and Chinese diplomats, and families who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tony holds his hand.

Steve thinks it’s unhealthy, but Tony understands. The Sokovia Foundation, the Iron Relief Fund, the Spencer scholarship - what are those but his own form of atonement? And they do help, no matter how cheap or uncaring other people might view his efforts. He has the resources; he can help make it better. Make up for what he’s done.

Bucky has none of that. All he can do is this: visit the graves, visit the families, hold himself together for the anger of his ghosts and survivors alike.

Tony will be there at night to hold him when he breaks apart. Tony will take him out again the next day. He’ll do everything Bucky needs to help him heal, and he’ll do it at Bucky’s side.

* * *

**2008/ _2014_  
** (Peel the scars from off my back/ _I don’t need them anymore)_

Freedom is harder than Tony remembers.

He doesn’t miss the caves, the drowning, the constant pain and threat of the car battery, or the lack of central plumbing. But there are things he has to get used to all over again. He can’t open the windows for the longest time, can’t seem to enjoy the wind on his face. He drags pillows into the bathtub because his mattress is too soft. The food is far too rich - he throws up that first cheeseburger he ate.

And he finds himself, on occasion, missing the terror that had filled the last three months of his life. He doesn’t know how not to be scared anymore. It gave him purpose, kept him fighting. 

It’s the one thing he doesn’t relearn. He keeps being scared. If he had been scared before, maybe none of this would have happened. 

 _The Asset - Bucky -_ he _, doesn’t quite know, understand, or like freedom, but it’s his now._

_HYDRA has yet to find him, and although he misses the order of his life before, he is in no urgent need to be found. He doesn’t miss the pain. He wants to know more about that name, that Bucky. And the man on the helicarrier who knew him._

Til the end of the line _._

 _The Asset - Bucky -_ he _runs. Even from the Captain. From all of it. He has nowhere to go but forward._

* * *

**June 2018  
** (All my nightmares escape my head  
_Bar the door please don’t let them in)_

Even after they get together, Tony and Bucky don’t sleep in the same bed for the longest time.

It’s simply too humiliating for Tony and too dangerous for Bucky. Their night terrors are fierce and their panic attacks even worse. Bucky doesn’t want to hurt Tony, and Tony doesn’t want Bucky to worry.

But they want this, and they want it so badly. They don’t need normal, but they would like to hold each other at night, have a conversation not littered with landmines. They would like to have unrestricted access to each other, to destroy FRIDAY’s privacy protocols for both of them.

So they fight for it. They’ve always been scrappy. They’ve always survived.

They go to therapy, separately and together. They start small: catnaps on the couch, Tony giving Bucky 24 hour access to the lab, Bucky setting up a specific alarm when he thinks he can handle Tony helping him through a flashback.

They have sex with all the lights on, but never in the shower or bath. Tony lets Bucky feel the scars on his chest, and Bucky finally allows a new arm to be built. They look at the stars; they play in the snow.

They relearn each other all over again. They draw new lines in the sand every day, each closer and closer to the heart, until one day there isn’t a need. 

And then they sleep together, side by side. Unguarded, but not unprotected. 

* * *

**Now  
_I’ve come home_**

“I think I deserve you,” Bucky says softly, watching his husband. Tony is laying against his chest, watching some dumb program on TV, and at his words twists to face him, smile a little bemused.

“You only _think_? I gotta tell you, you missed the mark for cold feet by a couple days there, Jimmy.”

“Oh, you deserve me, too. I think we’re perfect for each other,” Bucky continues, just to watch Tony’s smile solidify and grow. “All your edges fit mine.”

They are both so sharp. They would have cut everyone else to ribbons. But he and Tony, they fit. Broken in just the right way for each other.

“I’ve married a poet,” Tony teases, heaving himself up by Bucky’s shoulders so their faces are level. “A terrible poet with no rhyme scheme or meter.”

“But a truthful one,” Bucky says, tugging him close. 

“Yeah,” Tony sighs into his mouth. “That, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me at my tumblaaa [here](http://aslightstep.tumblr.com)


End file.
